FYI - LARD's win wasn't 100%American. Our caller is Canadian. 
LOL!
Hi All,
It was an outstanding weekend of racing with spectacular hot weather throughout (though the more traditional breeze returned on Sunday afternoon). The racing was fierce and the festival bigger than ever. My thanks to all of the teams for their support of our event...many have come for many years in a row now.
A big congrats to LARD for taking top honors and my personal thanks to them for sparing me from having to hear the Canadian anthem again (though our northern friends snuck it in a few times earlier in the awards ceremony anyway... very tacky ha ha!). It was certainly a pleasure to have puppy up on stage with me at the end to hear the Star-Spangled Banner !
We already have some thoughts on what we can improve on for next year and will follow up with the team captains for more, but if you have any additional thoughts on what you liked, impressions, things to be improved upon, I'd love to hear them.
As always, it is the broader DB community that helps to make this sport so special.
Cheers!
Hans
On behalf of Magnum, I'd like to thank you Hans, other race organizers, and volunteers for an awesome event. I'd also like to thank the Dragon Warriors for being such a good sport for hosting us. (I think I'm hooked to the watermelons and Cytomax you guys had haha!)
For almost all of us, this is our first time attending the SF festival and we had a BLAST! Coming home with more than one bling in a single festival is surreal (I think I lost my hearing for a good half hour due to the clinking noise of my medals...think of a bus full of paddlers with clinking medals lol)
It was also good to see that almost half of our team traded jerseys with other teams (Dragon Warriors, LARD, etc.)
As for improvement ideas for the future, perhaps tents/shelters in the marshaling area it self or nearby?
There was one tent but it was away from the marshaling area (near the staircase), and I always see tons of paddlers crowding in them.
(At times, Magnum, Jetstart, and other teams would resort to hiding out from the sun by crouching beside the recycling dumpster lol)
Thanks to all the teams for a great weekend of racing, and a shout out to Jetstart, you guys are awesome. Also, Congratulations to LARD for being the better team in the final race and taking it all. You guys deserved it, we'll see you next year at Alcan!
Look forward to returning to SF next year!
